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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27470845">he doesn't look a thing like jesus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAntlers/pseuds/MissAntlers'>MissAntlers</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the southern gothic verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, I can't believe I wrote a fic set on prom night but here we are, M/M, hartnell siblings shenanigans, the southern gothic AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:54:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27470845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAntlers/pseuds/MissAntlers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is so dumb.” Tom lies back in the grass, staring up at the starless sky choked with Baton Rouge light pollution. “You know what Johnny said? He said he just wanted to give me something good to remember. That’s why he brought me along. Well, ain’t nothing happened tonight that I wanna remember.”</p><p>or</p><p>the high school years prequel to <em><b>check the cupboard for your daddy's gun</b></em> that nobody asked for</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lt Edward Little/Sgt Solomon Tozer, Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the southern gothic verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>he doesn't look a thing like jesus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/gifts">lagardère (laurore)</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>an extremely self-indulgent prequel to mine and lagardère's big southern gothic fic <em>check the cupboard for your daddy's gun</em> because i just really like hanging out in this verse. idk what possessed me to write a prom night AU but i guess that's what comes of listening to kenny chesney that one time.</p><p>set seven years before the events of the original fic. absolutely makes more sense if you've read that one first but if you're just raw dogging it then i can respect this too.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Johnny, it ain’t fair!” Mary Hartnell howls from her bedroom door. “I got a dress and everything! Tom don’t even have proper pants, he’s gonna look like a farmer.”</p><p>Tom figures he agrees with her there. He feels trussed up like a prize hog, in a pair of Johnny’s old shoes and a shirt that hasn’t been worn since his father last took it out of the drawer years ago. His brother, on the hand, looks fit to be wed, with his dark hair combed out all neat and a fine pair of formal slacks that had been bought new the year before. Nevermind that it had been for the Torrington boy’s funeral. No point in wasting a good suit.</p><p>“You’re a freshman.” Johnny rolls his eyes at their sister. “I ain’t showing up to Senior Prom with a freshman.”</p><p>“Tom’s only a sophomore,” Mary cries, “and he don’t even like dancing!”</p><p>Their mother appears in her own doorway, rubbing her temples. “Mary, quit your hollering or I’ll jerk a knot in your tail. If Johnny wants to take his brother to the dance instead of you, that’s his business.”</p><p>She sleeps most of the day now, since they all woke up one morning two months back to find Luke Hartnell gone. Tom wonders if she’s hoping this is all some long bad dream, and the next time she opens her eyes, his father will be lying next to her like nothing’s changed. Betsy says she can’t understand it, their mother being all strange and sad now. <em> It ain’t like Daddy ever did her any good</em>, she says. But Betsy’s young. Tom understands – you get used to living a certain way, like a tree grown around a barbed wire fence, and when they want to take the fence down they’ve got to cut a piece of the tree off too. Luke and Sarah Hartnell had been married nearly twenty years. That’s a big old piece of tree, Tom figures.</p><p>“Come on,” says Johnny, steering Tom towards the door. “Let’s get out of here.”</p><p>
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</p><p>Edward runs his fingers through his hair again, fighting a losing battle with the Louisiana heat that seems impervious to pomade.</p><p>“I still think you should come with me,” he says.</p><p>Sol, sprawled out on Edward’s bed, gives a low chuckle but doesn’t look up from the magazine he’s reading.</p><p>“Take you to prom, is that what you want?”</p><p>Edward frowns. “It doesn’t have to be like that, if you don’t want it to. But it’ll be more fun if you’re there.”</p><p>“What I don’t understand,” Sol says, sliding off the bed now with his jeans still undone, “is why you’re going at all. Wouldn’t have thought it was your thing, getting dressed up to go stand in a sweaty school gym with a bunch of folks you don’t even like.”</p><p>He comes and stands behind him, putting his big hands on Edward’s shoulders and looking at their reflections in the mirror. Edward likes the look of them together, him in his fresh-ironed formalwear and Sol with his rumpled t-shirt, his minor league rodeo belt buckle. What a sight they would make, in another time, in another life, dancing together.</p><p>The truth is he doesn’t want to go, not really. Not once in his whole school career did he ever picture himself standing around drinking fruit punch and making awkward conversation with people he’d barely spoken to all year, while PG rated pop music whined away in the background. But before he could officially object, his father had paid for the ticket and his mother had taken him over to Baton Rouge to get a suit fitted, and Wendy had cleared a space on the parlour mantlepiece next to the already-fading portraits of his older siblings in their senior year dancewear. Eliza had even been Homecoming Queen. It was ritual, Edward realised, and ritual governed everything here.</p><p>“Quit messing with your hair,” Sol says. “You look fine.”</p><p>“Only fine?”</p><p>“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”</p><p>Sol catches him by the chin and tips his head back to kiss him deeply. Edward buries his fingers in Sol’s hair and holds on tight.</p><p>“Come with me,” he whispers against Sol’s mouth. “Please.”</p><p>“Can you really see me with a corsage?”</p><p>Edward kisses him again. “Will you come by again later, at least?”</p><p>“I’m going up to the reservoir with Tommy Armitage and a couple of the Manson boys. Might not be back til late.”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>Sol runs his thumb over Edward’s lips. “Text me when you’re done, maybe I’ll be around.”</p><p>A creak on the stairs beyond the bedroom door makes them tense up, and Sol presses a swift kiss to Edward’s mouth before making a dash for the window.</p><p>“Knock ‘em dead,” he says, and hoists himself out of the window into the arms of the tree below.</p><p>
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</p><p>Tom’s only sense of what a high school dance should look like comes from the depictions he’s seen in eighties movies, and this is kind of a disappointment. There are a few weary-looking paper streamers hanging from the ceiling that look like they’ve been recycled from the last decade’s worth of proms and homecomings, and a rather sparse buffet with a plastic tablecloth. The music is a little too quiet to get anyone in the mood to dance, and so most of the seniors are just standing in clusters around the edge of the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone for too long. Tom spots Edward Little and Sophia Cracroft, their elegance wilting slightly in the stuffy heat of the school gym, chatting to Graham Gore, who’s wearing his Letterman jacket instead of a blazer, and George Hodgson who looks like he’s just stuck his hand in a electrical socket, hair sticking up at wild angles.</p><p>“What’re we supposed to do?” Tom asks.</p><p>Johnny shrugs, but he’s already eyeing up a group of girls in big brightly coloured tulle skirts. “Hold my blazer, will you? I’ll be right back.”</p><p>Tom rolls his eyes and heads for the food table, where the pastor’s son is trying to arrange snacks on paper plates so that it looks like there’s more of them. Tom feels like he should say something. He’s always sort of thought he could like John Irving, if he let himself. He’s got nice hands and the sort of mouth that looks a little indecent on someone who spends most of his time talking about Jesus.</p><p>“Hey.” Tom swipes some of his hair out of his eyes. “You do all this yourself? Looks real nice.”</p><p>“It’s okay, it looks awful, I know.” John sighs, but when he glances up and sees Tom he smiles. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so dressed up. You look…different.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah? I dunno about it myself.” Tom attempts to brush away a non-existent crease in his shirt. It’s too tight for him in the armpits and he’s sure everyone can tell. “You look normal. Which is good.”</p><p>“So.” John clears his throat. “You here with your brother then? I’d have figured he’d bring a girl.”</p><p>“I guess none of them wanted to go with him and he didn’t fancy turning up alone.”</p><p>“Well, I’m glad. That he brought you, I mean. It’s good to see you.”</p><p>“Tom Hartnell, is that you?” Lacey Darlington appears alongside them and makes a show of ladling herself some punch. “I hardly recognised you under that shirt. And you combed your hair too, my goodness.”</p><p>Tom swallows. “Hey, Lacey. How you been?”</p><p>“Fine, just fine. But look at you, all dolled up. We might make a civilised man out of you yet.”</p><p>“Lacey,” says John, but that seems to be about all he can manage.</p><p>“Great seeing you boys.” She smiles at them both before trotting back towards her group of friends.</p><p>Tom wishes he could just erase himself from the whole room.</p><p>“She shouldn’t have talked to you like that,” John says. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“S’okay. Really. I’m just gonna go get some air for a minute.”</p><p>“Oh. Alright, well, see you later then?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Tom calls back over his shoulder, but John’s heading off on some church trip down in Mexico with his father this summer, and then he’ll probably wind up in seminary school, or something like that. No, Tom thinks, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks away, he’ll probably never see John again.</p><p>“This was a mistake,” he says, when he’s managed to get Johnny alone for a moment. “Mary was right, you should have brought her instead.”</p><p>“Hell, Tom, why do you think I didn’t? Mary’s gonna get her own prom in a few years.”</p><p>“Well so am I.”</p><p>“Yeah but you ain’t gonna go. Your best friend is a one-legged middle-aged shopkeeper. You don’t care about any of this, Tom, and that’s fine, I’ll take you just as you are, but at least when you’re our daddy’s age you can look back and say you went to one school dance.”</p><p>“Is that what this is about? Daddy?”</p><p>“Everything’s so messed up right now,” Johnny sighs. “I’m just tryna give you something good to remember.”</p><p>“Yeah, well. This ain’t for me, I’m out of here.”</p><p>He feels like he’s coming up from underwater as he strides out into the school parking lot, tugging at the collar of his shirt to loosen the buttons. The night air is close and smells of grass and exhaust fumes, and Tom loves it. This is where he belongs.</p><p>David Bryant is spray-painting something on the tarmac. Tom watches him spell out FUCK THE CLASS OF 2012 in big yellow letters and laughs despite himself. David looks up.</p><p>“What’re you doing here?”</p><p>“Leaving,” says Tom.</p><p>David nods as if this is understandable.</p><p>“Hey.” Tom takes a few steps closer. “You got anything on you?”</p><p>“Like what?”</p><p>“Come on, man, I know you only came here to spike the punch. Give me some of that.”</p><p>“Oh yeah? And what do I get in return?”</p><p>Tom raises his eyebrows, glancing at the paint on the ground. “Me not snitching on you.”</p><p>David huffs but he pulls out a flask from the back pocket of his jeans, and Tom throws it back with his eyes squeezed shut.</p><p>“Jesus, that’ll stick in your throat like a hair in a biscuit.”</p><p>“My uncle’s shine. He makes it to knock himself out.”</p><p>“Yeah well, that’ll do it.”</p><p>Tom shakes his head, trying to right himself, but it’s then that he notices someone heading across the parking lot towards them.</p><p>“Oh, hell.” David rakes a hand through his hair. “Ain’t that the pastor’s son?”</p><p>“What’s going on here?” John stands with his hands on his hips. “Are you defacing school property? And <em> drinking </em>?”</p><p>In the time it takes John Irving to berate them, Tom reckons he can see the kind of preacher he’ll grow up to be – straight-backed and stiff as a pine, colour rising in his cheeks, nostrils flaring, voice like a knife edge. Something of the Old Testament God about him, like he could smite a city with a look, and Tom feels like he does.</p><p>“Is this really what you want to be?” John asks him, but doesn’t wait for the answer, just takes off marching back towards the gym.</p><p>“Hey, wait!” Tom calls after him, but the only reply he gets is the lonely echo off the concrete. “Well thanks,” he says to David. “Thanks a whole damn lot.”</p><p>
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</p><p>Someone has spiked the punch. Edward can tell because he would never normally be lying on his back on the balding grass of the football pitch at night, nor would he ever ask Sophia: “So are you actually going to marry Francis Crozier, then?”</p><p>She groans and pulls up a handful of grass. “I don’t know. I do like him, you know? He’s steady. That’s hard to find round here.”</p><p>“But…?”</p><p>“But what if there’s more than just <em> round here </em>? You ever think about that?” She shakes her head. “Of course you do, you’re going to college. Imagine that.”</p><p>“You could go to college too.”</p><p>Sophia is quiet for a while, and Edward begins to worry he’s said something wrong. But then she rolls over and kisses him on the cheek.</p><p>“I’m going to miss you so much, Eddie. You have no idea.”</p><p>They wander back inside to fill up their plastic cups with more of whatever bizarre cocktail the tropical fruit punch has become. Edward briefly wonders where John is and why he hasn’t pitched a fit about it yet, but after another couple of drinks, he and Sophia clamber up to the top of the bleachers, all knees and elbows as they scramble over the seats, and then Sophia stands up on the railings, yelling,</p><p>“Here’s to getting the hell out of here, Eddie! Here’s to never coming back!”</p><p>
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</p><p>“Well god damn, are you drunk?”</p><p>Sol puts his arms out to catch Edward as he stumbles towards Sol’s truck in the half-light of the parking lot. Edward sinks against his chest, trying to press himself deeper into Sol’s pine-and-cigarette smell.</p><p>“Had to see you.”</p><p>“I ain’t your chauffeur, you know that right? I had plans tonight.”</p><p>Edward stares at his mouth as he talks, swaying slightly with the rush of the alcohol circulating through his body. “You still came.”</p><p>“Jesus Christ, get in the truck.”</p><p>There’s some sort of expectation crammed between them like a third passenger. Edward keeps stealing glances at him, breathing a little louder than usual, until Sol veers off suddenly, parks the truck on some nowhere road and gets out, practically storming round to Edward’s side. As Edward is half way out of the door Sol crowds him up against the frame with one hand between his legs, saying,</p><p>“You want something, you ask for it, don’t sit there giving me all that like you don’t know what you’re doing.”</p><p>Edward sticks his chin out, a little haughty even now as his hips buck into the heel of Sol’s hand. “I’m not going to beg for it if that’s what you want.”</p><p>But he says it too softly, a tremor in his voice, and when Sol takes his hand away suddenly, Edward whines.</p><p>“Don’t want you to beg,” Sol says. “Don’t ever want that. Just want you to ask. Politely. Like a gentleman.”</p><p>“Please, then.”</p><p>Edward bows towards him like he can’t stand up on his own, and Sol takes a step back.</p><p>“Please what?”</p><p>“Touch me. Please. I want you to.”</p><p>Sol is only a little taller than him, but he has more strength in his arms than Edward’s ever had, and it’s no trouble for him to pull Edward down into the long grass, his back to Sol’s chest, Sol’s hand on his thigh holding his legs apart while the other hand brings him off. Sol grips him firmly, even as Edward’s hips cant and his whole torso shudders with his laboured breathing, and when he bites down in his lip, Sol whispers against his ear, “Be as loud as you want out here, you son of a gun.” There is no one to hear them but the trees.</p><p>
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</p><p>Tom is sitting by the river when John finds him, shoes and socks discarded in the grass, digging his bare toes into the cool mud, trying to ground himself in the world he knows again. The dark still hasn’t settled down fully, it being summertime, and there is still a strip of orange far away on the western horizon, like a stain on the sky. Cicadas and chirp frogs are setting the mood. He figures he’ll hear the trees talking if he listens long enough.</p><p>John scrambles down the bank behind him, making enough noise to raise the dead, but Tom pretends he doesn’t notice him until John is only a few feet away, saying, “I wondered what happened to you.”</p><p>“Just had to get away.”</p><p>“Look…” John sounds a little out of breath. “I know it wasn’t you sprayed that message in the parking lot. David Bryant made a big deal out of saying he did it.”</p><p>“Good for him, I guess.”</p><p>Tentatively, the pastor’s son sits down in the grass, legs drawn up. There’s a slight breeze blowing in off the water, and Tom can see the hairs raised on John’s arms, pale in the twilight.</p><p>“You’re still mad.”</p><p>“I ain’t upset because of what you said. I shouldn’t have been drinking, that’s fair, I deserved that.” Tom sighs. “It’s just…that whole scene. I really didn’t belong there, I should have figured that.”</p><p>“Is this because of what Lacey Darlington said? Because, you know, she was really out of line.”</p><p>“I dunno. I don’t think she was wrong. I ain’t like all them other kids – hell, I ain’t even really like Johnny, but I don’t think he’s worked that out yet.”</p><p>Tom glances at him, and John looks down at his shoes. He still has that high colour in his cheeks, that slight blush to his mouth. He’s holding onto his own thin white wrists, and for a moment Tom imagines pressing his own mouth to them, feeling the tender skin, the steady pulse below. I’d make you a river crown, he thinks, out of twisted bark and bones. <em> I’d bring you pieces of polished glass and amber and dance around a bonfire with you. I’d make a false idol out of you, if you’d let me </em>.</p><p>John wets his lips. “I don’t think you should worry about being like the others.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Tom shoots him a tired smile. “Because the good Lord loves me just the way I am, right?”</p><p>“Something like that.”</p><p>“This is so dumb.” He lies back in the grass, staring up at the starless sky choked with Baton Rouge light pollution. “You know what Johnny said? He said he just wanted to give me something good to remember. That’s why he brought me along. Well, ain’t nothing happened tonight that I wanna remember.”</p><p>John hesitates a moment, but suddenly he leans down and kisses him, quick as anything, and then he’s up on his feet again, climbing back up the riverbank. He looks over his shoulder, once, and Tom doesn’t know what to say. Then he’s gone, back to his clapboard church and his hymn books and dust motes, and Tom figures it was as light a kiss as anyone’s ever known, dry lips barely brushing over his, because boys like John Irving must get used to living a certain way too. Trees growing up through barbed wire fences. But it was a kiss, Tom will always say it was a kiss. First one he ever had.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i'm sorry georgie wasn't in this one, i am just as upset about this as you are :(</p></blockquote></div></div>
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